title: Fetuses respond to father's voice but prefer mother's voice after birth.
abstract: Fetal and newborn responding to audio-recordings of their father's versus mother's reading a story were examined. At home, fathers read a different story to the fetus each day for 7 days. Subsequently, in the laboratory, continuous fetal heart rate was recorded during a 9 min protocol, including three, 3 min periods: baseline no-sound, voice (mother or father), postvoice no-sound. Following a 20 min delay, the opposite voice was delivered. Newborn head-turning was observed on 20 s trials: three no-sound, three voice (mother or father), three opposite voice, three no-sound trials with the same segment of each parent's recording. Fetuses showed a heart rate increase to both voices which was sustained over the voice period. Consistent with prior reports, newborns showed a preference for their mother's but not their father's voice. The characteristics of voice stimuli that capture fetal attention and elicit a response are yet to be identified.
authors.affiliation: Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Grace Y
authors.initials: GY
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Barbara S
authors.initials: BS
authors.lastname: Kisilevsky
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D005220:Fathers; D005260:Female; D005324:Fetal Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D005333:Fetus / Q000502:physiology*; D006340:Heart Rate, Fetal / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D009035:Mothers; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D011247:Pregnancy; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014831:Voice
keywords: father's voice; fetus; head-turning; heart rate; mother's voice; newborn; perception